A minimally invasive procedure is a medical procedure that is performed through the skin or an anatomical opening. In contrast to an open procedure for the same purpose, a minimally invasive procedure will generally be less traumatic to the patient and result in a reduced recovery period.
However, there are numerous challenges that minimally invasive procedures present. For example, minimally invasive procedures are typically more time-consuming than their open procedure analogues due to the challenges of working within a constrained operative pathway. In addition, due to the specialized instruments required for such procedures, efforts to enable flexibility/adaptability in the face of varying surgical scenarios can significantly increase the number (and hence, cost) of a given minimally invasive surgical system.
For example, vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) are now commonly treated by percutaneously positioning a bone tamp into the fractured vertebral body, inflating the bone tamp to create a void in the cancellous bone and potentially restore the vertebral body height, and then filling the void with a bone filler material (e.g., polymethylmethacrylate, or PMMA). This procedure is known as kyphoplasty.
Typically, kyphoplasty is performed using a non-directional bone tamp—i.e., a balloon catheter that expands radially about a central axis. However, depending on the nature of the VCF and/or the condition of the cancellous bone within the vertebral body, a directional bone tamp that expands radially in some directions but not others can improve procedure efficacy. Typically, non-directional bone tamps and directional bone tamps are separate devices, and only non-directional bone tamps are typically included in standard kyphoplasty kits to minimize kit costs. However, this undesirably reduces physician flexibility when performing a kyphoplasty procedure, and also increases procedure cost whenever a directional bone tamp is required.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide surgical tools and techniques that enable both non-directional and directional bone manipulation using the same instruments.